By mid XVth Century, Pachakutiq (his name means "That who changes the course of Earth") had started the geopolitics of the immense empire the Spanish conquerors found upon their arrival to South America. The expansion of the empire, initiated by Pachakutiq and continued by his son Tupac Yupanqui and later on by his grandson Huayna Qhapaq (his name means “The powerful young man”), was based on invasion and conquest of the nations that lived in the Andean region.
On his quest for conquering the northern nations, Tupac Yupanqui found two large groups of inhabitants in southern Ecuador. The Paltas, an Amazonian Indian group (jibaro-arawaco) that had arrived from the jungle surpassing the Oriental Range of the Andes had taken the territories of the modern Loja province, while the Cañaris, a nation of warriors were settled on the territories that nowadays are the provinces of Azuay and Cañar.
The Inka set out to the north, commanding a gigantic army, defeating the Paltas first and then fighting the Cañaris who offered a ferocious resistance. When the Inka eventually indexed the new territories to the Tahuantinsuyo, he resourced to an imperial politics that assured stability: the mitimaes, also known as mitmaqkunas.
In Kichwa language, Mitmaq means “to scatter”. Tupaq Yupanqui exiled entire nations and replaced them by loyal population. Thus, it is believed that he brought mitmaqkunas (the Kichwa name for banished people) from Bolivia to Saraguro. The clothing of Saraguro people is totally different from the rest of Andean indians, but is very similar to the Paquizhapas, indigenous people from the Bolivian zone of Urdaneta.
With this abstract about the Inka presence in Ecuador in mind, we decided to take advantage of a long weekend and go for our own Qhapaq Ñan (Royal road) and headed towards the Ingapirca (The Inka wall) archaeologic al complex located in the province of Cañar.
DÍA 1: Province of Loja. The Mitmaqkunas –Part 1-
We started the journey having the city of Saraguro as our first port. As I mentioned before, Saraguro people are mitmaqkunas, foreigners that came from the furthest corners of the empire; obsequent subjects of the Inka, that were settled in the region they were named after, to disarticulate any signs of resistance.
The Saraguros are the one and only ethnic group in the whole province of Loja that survived the Spanish colonization. This people that live on cultivating corn, raising cattle, weaving wool on ancient looms and crafting the finest costume jewelry in beads or silver, have for five centuries maintained their own language, their uses, their cosmogony , their way of dressing.
Syncretism was tried more than once by local authorities –who curiously were White, a tiny minority living amidst an indian population- resulting always into a hybrid that rather contributed to mark the divergences instead of bridging the differences, as in the case of the Catholic church beside a construction with “inka” pretenses.
Until recent date, all Saraguros spoke Kichwa fairly well. Both, females and males wore long, single braids and proudly kept the one that was their most distinctive characteristic: both men and women dressed fully in black, home-spun home-woven wool poncho and knee-length pants for him, an accordion pleated skirt and a thick wool shawl held to the front by a humongous silver-made pin named “Tupo” for her.
And it is precisely in this particular issue where I noticed that an era is coming to an end: young Saraguros still wear long hair even though the braid has evolved to a tied tail and they still dress in black all right, but their clothes are no longer loom made out of home-woven wool from their sheep or llamas: nowadays, Saraguro adolescents, boys and girls, dress in tight jeans and Tee-shirts sporting emblems of their favorite rock groups, just like any urban tribe.
The indo american stronghold that survived the empire, the conquest and colonization, was susceptible to globalización. It’s adolescents, like modern mitmaqkunas, ride the new century being now faithful followers of the edictal orderly fashion of their idols: the darkies or the heavies.
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